Lincoln By land and by Water

A good weekend with friends John and Rosi and from Sunday, daughter Emma.
We have visited Lincoln by bus, car and water.    By far my favourite way to visit any city is by water.
We ate on board on Sat and Sunday morning Geoff visited the local church at Saxilby whilst I waited in for Emma's arrival.  Strangely Geoff reported that the people at church were not as friendly as we usually find when we visit all the different churches.  John and Rosi collected us and after some lunch we drove into Lincoln.  John kindly dropped Rosi and I at the top of the hill close to the Cathedral and he and Geoff parked the car and did the harder walk back up the hill to meet us.
We then gently meandered around the Cathedral and were luck enough to hear the choir practicing which which made the tour round very enjoyable.

Difficult to obtain an outside view of the front as you cannot get far enough away

There are wonderful carvings depicting the stations of the cross and below are three of them

But this has to be the certificate of the century!!

After visiting the Cathedral we descended to the town and the waterfront which is very attractive with restaurants and cafe's BUT there are not any moorings within Brayford basin for visiting boats.  Such an opportunity missed.  There are moorings just before reaching the basin with space for a couple of narrow boats but the chances of finding an empty space are not good.
However it is possible to moor through the glory hole but probably not overnight and not for too long if you have a dog on board.  There are railings all along and although there are a couple of gates (Use BW key) we couldn't get the one close to where we moored to open .  Read further to see what we did!
Back to Sunday.....Emma drove us into Lincoln (no buses on Sunday) and we all had a good meal in Prezzo on the waterfront.  It may be a chain but the food and service were good and it was very comfortable.
By Monday we were alone on the Saxilby moorings

John and Rosi came out after breakfast and  Rosi and I departed for a mooch around Lincoln, leaving John & Geoff  to move Petroc to the Pyewipe Inn moorings and Emma to move her car up there and go for her training run.

John had his first taste of a trip on Petroc and I am told coped admirably although he did want to pass the two boats he met on the wrong side.......luckily Geoff realised his intentions in time!!

Later in the afternoon John collected Emma from Woodall Spa where she has positioned her car ready for her departure on Friday and we all had an excellent meal in the Pyewipe Inn.   At first we thought it was going to be a disaster as the first two wines we chose from their list of 6 house wines, were not available.............then the fish John had eventually decided upon was not exactly as shown on the menu and we thought he might just be going to throw his toys out of the cot.........however it became much better, we had a excellent waitress in Nicola and a very good meal and may well have to stop on the way back.
Sad goodbye to John and Rosi after dinner as they are leaving their hotel before we reach Lincoln.
Tuesday was a relatively gentle start (Emma still in bed!) we stopped at the sani station just outside Lincoln and by then the sun was out and it was a lovely ride through the pool and beyond.....everywhere looks so much better from the water.

At the far end of the pool you enter the narrow stretch through the centre of all the shops

and then the `Glory Hole`

Looking back at the `Glory Hole`

We moored along the wall right in the heart of the city

BUT  to get out of the mooring you need to go through one of the gates in the railing and we were unable to get our key to open the gate SO........................

Very undignified

When I returned I had to climb back again and then discovered that someone had managed to open the gate in my absence!

We then set off again and discovered that there are places to moor the other side, but the railings go most of the way along and none of the places looked very inviting.

We went through Stamp end Lock, the first of only 2 locks on this stretch.   The top gate is an unusual guillotine gate.   A boat was coming up and as you have to insert a key to operate the guillotine gate, we had to enter the lock and he to leave the lock so that he could lower the gate as you cannot extract the key until the gate is down again.   Luckily he wasn't in a rush!

Gate nearly down

Onward then to our destination of the moorings above Bardsey Lock, the second of the only 2 locks.

Very straight run and not many features but the sun was shining, the canal was wide and although there is a little weed it is nothing to write home about....so far...we have heard that there is more weed after the lock...we shall see.......

Looking back after leaving Lincoln the Cathedral stands out for miles

These are pontoon mooring so we have to walk Barney a short way to reach grass but they are very congenial..........we have just heard from John and Rosi that they are back in Cornwall and that they drove through some very heavy rain en route so hope it is not coming this way.    We were so lucky yesterday as rain was forecast but did not materialise and we had a glorious day, and then the rain came in the night.